There is a phenomena described by serious mountaineers who, having finally struggled to the crest of a vertiginous peak, experience not the sense of elation and celebration that was perhaps visualised back at base camp, but instead a blank numbness; a complete inability to think anything at all. Bodies and minds are wracked with exhaustion and ravaged by hypoxia, to the point where mental faculties are reduced to those of a small child.

One might well wonder why anyone would choose to put themselves through this at all.

With bugs to fix across two hardware platforms (one of them brand new), a new technology (cross-play), eight SKUs (European, US, Asian and Japanese versions of each platform), six QA departments, 19 languages featuring five different alphabets, plus extra post-release functionality and features (watch this space!), finishing the project has sometimes felt like a Sisyphean task for our tiny team.

Now that the dust has settled, though, we’re able to reflect on what we’ve achieved with a feeling of pride. We once again have time to get together to play our game and remind ourselves what great fun it really is, whether played alone or with a bunch of friends, new or old. We’ve had some great reviews, and more importantly, a fantastic response from gamers all over the world who have enjoyed the game.

We’ve also had a hell of a lot of fun along the way. Over the past year and a half we have built a great prototype, founded our company, secured a publishing deal, set up an office and built a small close-knit team who like to play together as well as work together. It’s been a rollercoaster ride, and we’ve enjoyed (most of) it immensely.

We’re now looking forward to the adventure we’re going to have creating our next game, in 2013. This really is the most fun part of the whole process – back to the magic of experimentation, prototyping, and creation. We have another huge mountain to climb, and we hope you’ll all come with us so you can see the view on the other side.

From everyone at Clever Beans, we hope you enjoy the festive season and we wish you all a very happy and prosperous (and fun) New Year!

]]>http://blog.us.playstation.com/2012/12/28/happy-christmas-from-the-when-vikings-attack-team/feed/16http://blog.us.playstation.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/12/8280933416_fba1e95d72_b.jpg4.08Associate Producer, XDev161When Vikings Attack! Ten Tips to Conquer Your Foeshttp://blog.us.playstation.com/2012/11/07/when-vikings-attack-ten-tips-to-conquer-your-foes/
http://blog.us.playstation.com/2012/11/07/when-vikings-attack-ten-tips-to-conquer-your-foes/#commentsWed, 07 Nov 2012 16:00:25 +0000http://blog.us.playstation.com/?p=89936When Vikings Attack! is finally out on PSN today! It’s been a long road for the team getting their first game out on both PS3 and PS Vita at the same time but they’ve done it without a hitch!
We’d like to take the opportunity now to thank everyone who’s taken the time to support us during development, played the game at local events and tweeted nice things about us. We hope you all love the finished product and continue to feed back to us any comments you might have.
Now that it’s out, we expect to see many brave citizens battling online, so we’ve put together our top 10 tips for playing the game. Read them well - they may give you the edge online!
]]>Hey folks, I’m very pleased to announce that When Vikings Attack! is finally out on PSN today! It’s been a long road for the team getting their first game out on both PS3 and PS Vita at the same time but they’ve done it without a hitch!

We’d like to take the opportunity now to thank everyone who’s taken the time to support us during development, played the game at local events and tweeted nice things about us. We hope you all love the finished product and continue to feed back to us any comments you might have.

Now that it’s out, we expect to see many brave citizens battling online, so we’ve put together our top 10 tips for playing the game. Read them well – they may give you the edge online!

X to dash and catch
Pressing the X button will make your team perform a speedy dash — essential for avoiding incoming projectiles. If you’re a bit more confident, you can dash into an incoming object and snatch it out of the air to quickly return it your opponent! This is a very useful move in heated battles.

Dash and Bash
As well as being a defensive move, dash can also be used offensively. See an oncoming car? Dash into your opponent to knock them in its path!

Remember to spin!
By pressing L1 or R1 (L or R on PS Vita) repeatedly you will spin the object you’re holding. When it builds up enough speed, it becomes an unstoppable missile that cannot be caught by your opponent.

Your team is your health
The more people you have on your team, the more likely you are to survive an attack. Collect as many people as you can to stay alive longer.

Bigger is not always better
Having a larger team means you have more health but it also means you are a little slower; a team of one has far more speed and can run rings around a huge team of 10.

Look out for bombs
There are three types of bombs in the game, some explode on impact, some bounce on walls until they hit a player and some steal members of the opposing teams, use these to your advantage when they appear, they can turn the tide of a game in seconds.

Buff characters
Every-so-often you will see a character run on screen with an icon above their head, be the first to grab them and your whole team will gain a stat boost in either movement speed, strength or throw speed. Hold onto these guys as long as you can.

Pay attention to your environment
Each level of the game (Vs. and Quest) features some kind of environmental hazard to either avoid or use to your advantage. See a pipe? Throw something down there and it will probably come out somewhere else. Don’t be afraid to get close and shunt your opponent off a cliff edge either if you see one.

Hidden characters
Keep an eye out for some level puzzles; by solving these you will unlock one of the hidden characters in the game. Some are harder than others but all reveal a reward. There’s a trophy for collecting them all so pay attention!

New enemies
In Quest mode the enemies change as you progress, not all can be defeated by tossing a giant pork chop at them though, use your brain and your surroundings to come up with new ways of defeating tough foes.

So there you have it. We hope these tips will help you on your way to online supremacy — or allow you to reign supreme on the couch. When Vikings Attack! is out now on PSN for PS3 and PS Vita as a Cross-Buy game – buy it once, get it on both systems!

]]>http://blog.us.playstation.com/2012/11/07/when-vikings-attack-ten-tips-to-conquer-your-foes/feed/24http://blog.us.playstation.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/11/8163568001_49490c9383_b.jpg3.76Associate Producer, XDev244When Vikings Attack! Out Tuesday: 10 (Mostly) True Facts You Didn’t Knowhttp://blog.us.playstation.com/2012/11/02/when-vikings-attack-out-tuesday-10-mostly-true-facts-you-didnt-know/
http://blog.us.playstation.com/2012/11/02/when-vikings-attack-out-tuesday-10-mostly-true-facts-you-didnt-know/#commentsFri, 02 Nov 2012 16:02:25 +0000http://blog.us.playstation.com/?p=89529When Vikings Attack! is out November 6th (that's Tuesday!) for PS3 and PS Vita via PSN, and is a Cross-Buy title -- buy it once, get it on both platforms.
In the run up to release the team over at Clever Beans wanted to cast a bit more information out to help people understand the game a little better so we asked them to write a top 10 of interesting facts about the game and where it came from. The guys have loads of stories from the development of the game -- probably more than you’d think.
So without further ado, we present: 10 mostly true facts you probably didn’t know about When Vikings Attack!]]>

In the run up to release the team over at Clever Beans wanted to cast a bit more information out to help people understand the game a little better so we asked them to write a top 10 of interesting facts about the game and where it came from. The guys have loads of stories from the development of the game — probably more than you’d think.

So without further ado, we present: 10 mostly true facts you probably didn’t know about When Vikings Attack!

1. Real Vikings didn’t wear horns on their helmets.
But they do in our game. Apologies to any Viking fans, Scandinavians, historians, or anyone else who feels we have unfairly besmirched the reputation of Vikings or taken liberties with historical accuracy. The game is deliberately based only on vague, half-remembered half-truths from high school (longer ago than you might imagine). Real Vikings are indeed a fascinating subject, but this game is about the Vikings of common mythology, rather than real history.

Also, Vikings did not really invade 1970s Britain. We made that bit up too.

2. Many of the sound effects for the game were recorded by our sound designer Jamie Finlay during a foley session in an abandoned warehouse full of stolen biscuits (cookies) that was demolished the next day.
In fact, Vikings probably has the largest sound budget of any game that we have worked on. By “budget”, we programmers mean the amount of the console’s memory that is dedicated to storing sound effects and music as opposed to graphics or computer code or other stuff. Almost everything in the game has a customized smashing or throwing sound, or both, many of which will make you laugh out loud. There are also countless funny vocal exclamations, in various accents from all over the UK; at Clever Beans we call these “Ey-Ups”.

Jamie is a real perfectionist, and even took his laptop on vacation to Spain with his girlfriend so that he could do some last-minute voice-over editing for us. We can only apologize to her for this.

3. An early storyline for the game involved a talking horse with a colander on his head.
We will definitely include a talking horse in one of our games, in the future. There are clearly nowhere near enough games about talking horses.

4. In a (much) earlier version of the game, the player could punch, kick and jump, and also throw other characters around just like objects.
We’re big fans of “iterative prototyping”. The game started out as a massive beat-em-up, like a bar-brawl. To start with, we couldn’t figure out how to make this seem like a convincing fight; there were a lot of characters wandering around doing nothing, and it wasn’t clear how the player could control more than one character at once. So we decided to have friendly characters follow the player character around. We had the idea that they were your “lives”, who would be following you around, waiting to step in and take over when needed. From there, it was only a small step to make them all controllable at once, as a team.

5. In one prototype level that we built, player teams could walk on walls.
Another case of us stretching our ambition a little too far. It all got a bit too confusing, both to play and to code.

The game feels a little bit like an iceberg sometimes, a little pile of fun sitting on top of a much larger mountain of submerged, discarded gameplay ideas. It sometimes feels like we’ve written around three games in order to make this one, and thrown the other two away.

6. The characters that you see in the game are the 3rd or 4th iteration character models.

An early prototype “stick-man” character is unlockable in the game; see if you can find him! Producers at Sony liked this little guy so much that they asked for him to be put back him, even though he was only a “coder” graphic made by one of the programmers. We got an artist to re-make him with a nice smiley face, though.

A later, but equally defunct, character model can be found near the town hall in the game, as a statue.

7. No penguins were harmed during the making of the “Zoo” level.
The donkey, however, was completely bent out of shape, over the course of the project. Originally built for our first prototype world, he was re-used in the “sorting office” world, the “pier” world, then transformed into a zebra for the “zoo”. Finally, after a lot of stretching and another new paint job, he put in a stint as a giraffe, also in the zoo. Such is the nature of indie game development – we all have to wear a lot of hats. Even donkeys have to wear a lot of hats.

8. The most time-consuming special animation was the mime artist.
But he was the quickest to make sound effects for. The robot “Auscenic” is another favorite animation. The track that he is break-dancing to is actually “I’m in the mood for dancing” by the Nolan Sisters. So he’s not quite as cool as you might think.

9. The inspiration for the “Public Information” films that punctuate the game came from a series of 1970s cold-war films called “Protect and Survive”.
These were made in case of a nuclear attack on Britain, but never broadcast – perhaps because they are so terrifying. We substituted the cold-war terror of a nuclear invasion for a load of daft Vikings. Another inspiration was a British comedy series called “Look Around You”. This is a spoof of 1970s educational programs, which has excellent period sound and music effects. It’s also completely brilliant and hilarious.

10. When Vikings Attack! has the longest credits list in the history of gaming.
The normal credits are pretty dull, I’m afraid. But when you reach the end of the game, you will unlock the “enhanced” credits. These really are worth watching, and listening to.

]]>http://blog.us.playstation.com/2012/11/02/when-vikings-attack-out-tuesday-10-mostly-true-facts-you-didnt-know/feed/27http://blog.us.playstation.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/11/vikings.jpg4.15Associate Producer, XDev2714When Vikings Attack! Costume Design Contest Winners Revealedhttp://blog.us.playstation.com/2012/10/04/when-vikings-attack-costume-design-contest-winners-revealed/
http://blog.us.playstation.com/2012/10/04/when-vikings-attack-costume-design-contest-winners-revealed/#commentsThu, 04 Oct 2012 16:02:19 +0000http://blog.us.playstation.com/?p=86592When Vikings Attack! So what’s been happening since the last update? Well, apart from tirelessly working on the game day and night, the team have been to Gamescom, Comic Con and just this last weekend the game took a trip to the Eurogamer Expo in London. All of the events were great; we were all super happy to get your tweets and positive reactions, so big thanks to everyone who played the game!
Anyway, it seems about time that we announced the winner of our design a character competition.]]>It’s been a while, but we’re back with some updates on When Vikings Attack! So what’s been happening since the last update? Well, apart from tirelessly working on the game day and night, the team have been to Gamescom, Comic Con and just this last weekend the game took a trip to the Eurogamer Expo in London. All of the events were great; we were all super happy to get your tweets and positive reactions, so big thanks to everyone who played the game!

Anyway, it seems about time that we announced the winner of our design a character competition. We got so many crazy, weird and wonderful entries — it was incredibly hard for us to choose just three from all the entries across the globe. In the end, the team made the call to choose designs that allowed them to do some cool animations to flesh the characters out. There was a desire to make some cool standout characters, and with the help of your deigns we think that’s been possible.

Our three winners are:

Victim of the Sea

By Mondchueh from Sweden

We choose this one out of all the entries because we immediately saw the opportunity to create a cool animation around it, the idea of a guy running around with a giant fish on his head… well it just spoke to us.

Auscenic

By D-Squad3 from America

We choose Auscenic because we really, really wanted a body popping robot in the game. So maybe we have to apologise to the artist if this robot was intended to be some kind of blood thirsty Viking killing machine because in our game… he’s a dancing machine. That’s just the way these things go, right? How many times have evil companies turned innocent technology into weapons? We prefer this approach.

Jiang Shi

By DistroW90 from China

Our game is set in Britain, so we have lots of quirky British characters in there. For this one we wanted something a bit different, so when we came across a traditional Chinese hopping zombie in the entries, we had to go for it. Games are full of zombies these days… not enough hopping zombies though. Come on people! Let’s re-balance things!

And the runners up? Well, there are far too many to put in this post — click here to see them all.

All three winning designs are now in the game as unlockable characters; we love them, so we hope that you do too! Let us know what you think about the winners and runners up in the comments or tweet at us here.

We’re always happy to answer any questions you might have about the game. Keep any eye on the blog in the coming month to get some more updates on the game — we can’t wait to reveal the release date and get it into your hands.

]]>http://blog.us.playstation.com/2012/10/04/when-vikings-attack-costume-design-contest-winners-revealed/feed/14http://blog.us.playstation.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/vikings.jpg4.44Associate Producer, XDev144When Vikings Attack! Character Design Contesthttp://blog.us.playstation.com/2012/07/19/when-vikings-attack-character-design-contest/
http://blog.us.playstation.com/2012/07/19/when-vikings-attack-character-design-contest/#commentsThu, 19 Jul 2012 14:01:49 +0000http://blog.us.playstation.com/?p=80299PlayStation Vita whilst your own character design is implemented in When Vikings Attack! as a playable character?
Well now you can, thanks to the When Vikings Attack! Character Design Contest that begins today! PlayStation and the awesome guys over at Clever Beans are offering one lucky gamer the opportunity to design a character in our upcoming Viking ‘em up for PSN.
Need a catch up on the game? Here’s Martin and Andrew from Clever Beans being all British at E3, describing When Vikings Attack! for both PS3 and PS Vita. ]]>
Would you like to help the war effort against the Viking hordes? How about win a PlayStation Vita whilst your own character design is implemented in When Vikings Attack! as a playable character?

Well now you can, thanks to the When Vikings Attack! Character Design Contest that begins today! PlayStation and the awesome guys over at Clever Beans are offering one lucky gamer the opportunity to design a character in our upcoming Viking ‘em up for PSN.

Here are a couple examples of a few of the existing townsfolk in the game and how they went from sketch to character model.

Don’t feel like you have to be constrained to the time period or location of the game. We understand that all sorts participated in the great battle, so go wild and let your imagination have at it. Some of you may be hesitant to enter a contest that entails drawing, but have no fear. Artistic skill is not a requirement here—this is a contest of creativity! To ease your nerves, some of the folks at SCEA have volunteered to share their designs:

From the mind of Sharon Kapitula of the Product Marketing team comes Chester. Upon losing his life’s fortune on a bad Keno bet in Vegas, Chester has returned to the sleepy isle of Great Britain to rebuild his life and rekindle an old flame with his enigmatic ex, Wanda—but who knows how his life and relationship will fare When Vikings Attack!

From Kristina Cheng and the Marketing team’s imagination is Wanda. Having had her heart broken by the smooth operator known as Chester, she has fallen into a life of endless partying and a generally unpleasant demeanor. Perhaps the hardships of the Viking attack will teach her the true virtues of life?!

Eric Fong of Santa Monica Studio brings us Al and Spike. Al is your typical middle-aged mustachioed local sporting goods store owner. Spike, on the other hand, is a seasoned warrior who’s been preparing for the zombie/alien apocalypse. What Spike didn’t expect was the Great Viking Horde, and he’s extremely angry he didn’t see it coming.

Rob Guarino of the Promotions team turns the tables on the Vikings by drawing one of their very own—or so it appears. Actually, at the time of the Viking invasion, Olga had just left the local opera house after obtaining a standing ovation for her starring role in the live performance of “The Ride of the Valkyries.” Talk about being in the right outfit at the wrong time!

br>Here we have the ultimate recluse, Tom, by Mike Pulst, ISD Producer. Ever-hydrated with his sippy hat and equipped with his trusty three-wolf moon shirt and tighty-whities, his Viking invasion battle strategy is to avoid it entirely from the comfort of his mother’s basement.

On August 9th, the guys at Clever Beans will be reviewing the entries and picking the best one, which will go on to battle the Viking hordes later this year when the game launches. The winner will also receive a brand new PS Vita console and a voucher code for the game. 10 runners up will receive a voucher code for the game.

]]>http://blog.us.playstation.com/2012/07/19/when-vikings-attack-character-design-contest/feed/28http://blog.us.playstation.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/7600483834_7b70f9fa7b_b.jpg4.15Associate Producer, XDev285Prepare Yourself for When Vikings Attackhttp://blog.us.playstation.com/2012/05/24/prepare-yourself-for-when-vikings-attack/
http://blog.us.playstation.com/2012/05/24/prepare-yourself-for-when-vikings-attack/#commentsThu, 24 May 2012 16:04:30 +0000http://blog.us.playstation.com/?p=76338PSN title coming this year! I’m very excited to introduce When Vikings Attack for PS3 and PS Vita.
In this all-action fighting adventure, a battalion of Viking invaders, 1200 years late to the party, are causing havoc in your town. Imagine getting together a posse of local citizens: a construction worker, a butcher, a policeman, a pastor, and a schoolboy, then ripping up a phone booth or picking up a car,and hurling it at the advancing Viking hordes. That's the sort of crazy action you can expect in this totally new and original PSN title for PS3 and PS Vita.]]>

Hey folks, I’m here today to announce a new PSN title coming this year! I’m very excited to introduce When Vikings Attack for PS3 and PS Vita.

In this all-action fighting adventure, a battalion of Viking invaders, 1200 years late to the party, are causing havoc in your town. Imagine getting together a posse of local citizens: a construction worker, a butcher, a policeman, a pastor, and a schoolboy, then ripping up a phone booth or picking up a car,and hurling it at the advancing Viking hordes. That’s the sort of crazy action you can expect in this totally new and original PSN title for PS3 and PS Vita.

Grab whatever you can and get ready to do battle!

Featuring both adventure and Versus gameplay modes that can be played with one to four players, the game has been winning fans within the walls of PlayStation with its manic, quick-fire gameplay ever since it came into being.

Did I mention that it’s also a full cross play/save/buy title? So all gameplay modes can be played between PS Vita and PS3 in pretty much any combination you can imagine: two PS3s and two Vitas or one PS3 and three Vitas or one PS3 with three players and one Vita… I could go on but let’s just say you can have four players in any combination of systems you want. Also, with cross-platform save you can carry on your Adventure mode progress no matter where you are, just upload the save file from your PS3 and download it to your PS Vita or vice versa. Then to top it all off and make this the perfect Crossplay game, we are also offering both versions for one price, no matter which version you buy you will get the other for free… a pretty good deal, if you ask me!

I’ll be back in the coming weeks along with some of the guys from Clever Beans (the development team behind the game) to introduce you to even more features and let you in on some behind-the-scenes details of how the title came into being and what you can expect when it launches later this year.

Post any questions you have in the comments and I’ll endeavor to answer whatever I can. Thanks and good day!